If you’ve seen Memento, you might have a slight idea how jarring it would be for a person’s memory to be wiped every night. Now, London’s condition is not nearly so severe as that lead character’s is in the movie since hers comes with a surprising twist (and no need for tattoos covering her body).
Each night at precisely 4:33 am, while sixteen-year-old London Lane is asleep, her memory of that day is erased. In the morning, all she can “remember” are events from her future. London is used to relying on reminder notes and a trusted friend to get through the day, but things get complicated when a new boy at school enters the picture. Luke Henry is not someone you’d easily forget, yet try as she might, London can’t find him in her memories of things to come.
When London starts experiencing disturbing flashbacks, or flash-forwards, as the case may be, she realizes it’s time to learn about the past she keeps forgetting-before it destroys her future.
London’s condition started when she was about six years old. During the course of the book, it’s revealed why that age is so important and what might have been the trigger to set her off. It’s a fascinating idea, but with it comes with rather obvious questions, like how does she retain basic information if the previous day is wiped? How does she answer questions on tests if she can’t remember the previous lessons on the topic? Basically, how does she deal with the accumulation of knowledge, period?
While none of these questions have clear answers, the fact that she can ‘see’ into the future and forgets the past makes you wonder how, one, she figured out she was seeing the future and could trust it, and two, how her parents dealt with her condition at first. There are hints to therapists and I could even see hospitalization taking place at some point if they didn’t believe her. I would like to know the moment, though, that they finally believed her. Just to satisfy my own curiosity.
The introduction of Luke and how she couldn’t see him in her future was interesting, since for a while, he was very clearly a part of her future. The way she handled her ‘history’ of him at one point was kind of immature, think ’50 First Dates’, but how Luke handled it made me like him a lot more than I did before.
I’m very glad this was a stand-alone since I’m pretty much sick of trilogies at this point. Cat Patrick seems to be sticking to writing stand-alones that interest me, so I’ll definitely keep reading her work.